In a study lasting more than a year, Italian scientists evaluated brain activity while people read, and were able to determine their native language and level of proficiency in other languages.

Subjects’ brain activity was surprisingly different when they were shown words in their native language, as opposed to words in other languages they spoke. The results “show how differently the brain absorbs and recalls languages learned in early childhood and those learned later in life,” reported the Los Angeles Times.

Italian professor Alice Mado Proverbio said a person’s native language prompts associations in the brain, which show up as heightened electrical activity.

Proverbio said the finding could aid communication between doctors and patients with amnesia or diseases that affect speech, such as dyslexia. Additionally, it could be used to determine the nationality of refugee applicants or terrorism suspects.

Recently, research performed at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dalian University of Technology indicated that the first language a person learns “may fine-tune neural circuits in distinctive ways,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

Native language has also been shown to influence the way the brain solves mathematical puzzles and processes phonetics.

In a study, Italian scientists observed brain activity while people read, and were able to determine their native language and level of proficiency in other languages. The results reveal differences in how the brain “absorbs and recalls languages learned in early childhood and those learned later in life,” according to Alice Mado Proverbio, professor of cognitive electrophysiology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, in Milan, Italy.

According to researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dalian University of Technology, native language influences the way the brain responds to the written word. New research suggests that the first language a person learns “may fine-tune neural circuits in distinctive ways.”

In a study released in June 2006, researchers at China’s Dalian University of Technology determined that a person’s native language could be related to the way the brain solves mathematical problems. The researchers conducted brain scans of college seniors, and found that Chinese speakers “rely more on visual regions” when dealing with math than do English speakers.

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania showed that while young children are learning words, they are also interpreting the sounds associated with their native language. Toddlers are capable of determining whether differences in word sounds are important, or just random variation, depending on the workings of their mother tongue.

Recent research suggested that girls are better than boys at learning languages because girls’ brains are more active in areas used specifically for language encoding. Boys’ brains are more active in visual and auditory sectors when faced with language tasks.

Science Direct has the abstract of the study, “Inferring native language from early bio-electrical activity,” conducted by Alice Mado Proverbio, Roberta Adornia and Alberto Zani at the University of Milano-Bicocca.